


Momentary Lapses

by dashakay



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-29
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-03 23:22:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do mortal sins, fever in the blood, Cuban rum drinks, swollen noses, salty tattoos, and hotel rooms in three states have in common?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this series was co-written with Plausible Deniability. He does not have an AO3 account, so I'm not able to give him proper credit in the headers, but this series would not exist without his tremendous talents.

Bless me, father, for I have sinned.

I have committed the unpardonable error of sleeping with my partner. On three separate occasions.

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm weak. I'm as susceptible to the sins of the flesh as the next person. My businesslike mien is merely the side I show on the surface to the world. There's a lot more going on underneath the neatly buttoned suits and stockings that never, _ever_, run than you'd think. I get horny, too.

Call it a weakness. I'm weak for him, like I'm weak for chocolate-chocolate chip ice cream, weak for Chopin piano concertos, weak for hideously expensive Egyptian cotton sheets with a high thread count.

The first time was an accident, pure and simple. It was a blustery February in Washington and we headed to Miami for a case. The whole thing turned out to be a waste of our time and the taxpayers' money, so we ended up staying only two days. On the last night, Mulder and I decided to see a bit of the city before we left, and headed for South Beach.

On the crowded, bustling beachfront, lined with Art Deco hotels and populated by the most godawfully attractive men and women I ever have had occasion to see with my two eyes, we found a Cuban restaurant and secured an outdoor table. Actually, the only reason why we got such a great table is because the headwaiter seemed entranced by Mulder's sleepy eyes.

Our waiter/underwear model, Alejandro, urged us to order mojitos, a powerful blend of white rum, sugarcane syrup, fresh mint and just enough club soda to make the whole thing fizz. Not being big drinkers, Mulder and I got smashed before our puerco asado, black beans and plantains were even served.

There's just something about Miami, that's all I'm going to say. I'll blame it on three mojitos and the tropically moist air that unfortunately does turn my hair into an unruly mess. Or else, blame it on the way the air smelled, like coconut oil, like cigars, like sea salt and expensive French perfume all at once.

Yes, blame it on all that. I certainly had no plans to ravish Mulder, who sat tipped back in his chair in a far too tight black t-shirt and bemusedly smiled at the parade of beautiful people passing before us.

It never even entered my mind.

Okay, maybe it did flicker through my rum-damaged brain for the merest millisecond, but I'm human. Am I right?

We got back to our hotel and Mulder came into my room, to retrieve his laptop. Mmm-hmm. See, it was all his fault. He started it.

He set the computer back down on the desk and stood for a moment, saying nothing, but I could hear his breathing from where I was standing at the window, watching the way the breeze ruffled the fronds of the palm trees. Mulder just walked up to me, unceremoniously grabbed my arms and pushed me against the wall.

Some women might take offense at that, call it blatant sexual harassment, but I'm not your average woman.

Mulder and I had some raucous sex that night, more passion than pleasure, pawing and groping at each other like hormone-challenged high school students in the back seat of daddy's car. It was intense, it was furious, it lasted most of the night until we were sore, bruised and basically immobilized from sheer exhaustion.

In the morning we woke up, cleaned ourselves up and caught our plane home. I had to apply a lot of Clinique Natural Ivory to cover the marks on my neck from my rum-scented vampire.

We didn't discuss what had happened.

We just went on from there like that night had never occurred. It was the wisest, best course of action. Mulder and I had been drunken fools that night in Miami. It was wrong.

An interesting note for you: there is no specific Bureau regulation about partners becoming sexually involved, but I know and you know that it's not exactly cricket. You just don't sleep with your partner. It dulls your edge and creates all sorts of sticky issues that get in the way of the job that needs to be done.

It was a mistake, albeit an intensely fantastic one, but I swore on a stack of Bibles as tall as myself that we'd never do it again.

A few months passed and we were in Wausau, Wisconsin, chasing down some murdering thug who claimed to be a faith healer. We were giving chase in a field on said murdering thug's brother's farm when I slipped on some cow turds and smacked my face on the hard earth. It hurt like a bitch.

Mulder managed to catch the overweight, puffing guy and cuff him. When he turned to me I was standing there, blood gushing out of my nose. My mother was right, I should always have a travel pack of tissues in my pocket, because the crimson blood was completely soaking the lone Kleenex I was able to find. His face went white, absolutely white.

He had witnessed so many nosebleeds of mine in the past. Grabbing the thug's arm, he ran over to me. "Are you all right?" he asked, breathing hard from the effort of dragging a 300-pound guy with him.

I nodded, unable to speak as I was pressing the tissue to my face. When it seemed the deluge had ended, I pulled the soaked Kleenex away. "I fell," I said. "I think I broke my nose."

The relief on Mulder's face was palpable. The murderer just smirked, as if to say, 'Why are you getting so upset over a wussy nosebleed, G-Man?'

After we dumped off the suspect and got him booked, we headed to the hospital. The x-ray showed no break, so we went back to the Rib Mountain Motel: Free Cable and Ski Storage.

Back in my room, I lay down on the bed with a bag of ice pressed to my beleaguered nose, mourning the loss of my favorite knockoff Jil Sander jacket to the nosebleed. I heard the connecting door open. Mulder loped in, bearing an ice bucket and two cans of Coke. "I came to see how the patient is doing."

"Very funny," I mumbled through the makeshift ice pack.

He sat on the edge of the bed. "That scared the shit out of me," he said, his hands doing a funny little dance in his lap.

I put the bag of ice on the bedside table and sat up, realizing I probably looked just like Marsha Brady after she got bopped in the nose with the football. "I'm fine," I said. It's my standard response, but this time I meant it.

"For how long?" I had to strain to hear that last comment.

Scooting down the bed, I sat next to him. "No one knows how long they have." I turned to him and put my arms around him to give him a reassuring hug. If you can't hug your partner, whom can you hug?

At least, that was my rationale at the time. I should have known better. Another thing my mother always told me: hindsight is 20/20.

The chaste, partnerly hug went on for a long time and gained an intensity of its own and the next thing I knew it was full sun-up and I was lying next to him, buck naked, sticky, sweaty and thoroughly worn out. My nose was throbbing like crazy, as it had...um...gotten bumped a few times in the throes of our "case consultation." I staggered out of bed, took a few Tylenol 3 from my emergency stash and crashed until mid-afternoon, when Mulder forcibly dragged me out of bed and into the shower so we could make our plane.

Again, we pretended nothing had happened. Deny everything is our motto. I should have had that tattooed on my back instead of the snake.

Which brings me to last night. We've been in Boston for four days, investigating the mysterious deaths of callers to a psychic hotline. At one time I would have found this case to be unfathomably bizarre, but now it's ho-hum, more decapitations with the heads missing. Another day on the road with Mulder.

Not to say I'm bored by my job, I'm just incredibly inured to the grotesque and unusual after six years.

Last night I was exhausted and I turned in early, delighted to be in a decent city hotel with clean sheets and carpeting that doesn't smell like Queequeg's flea powder. Yawning, I snapped off the bedside lamp and immediately sank into the black depths of sleep.

I awoke with a start to feel something wet slithering along my back. My right hand scrambled for the gun on the table until I realized it was Mulder's tongue, circling my tattoo.

We really have to rethink this adjoining rooms thing.

Okay, I forgot one important part. Normally, when I'm out on a case, I sleep in pajamas or at least a t-shirt and panties. I was so beat last night that I took a shower, toweled myself off and slid into bed without a stitch on my body. What was I thinking? Without any clothes, I was utterly defenseless against Mulder's advances.

My brain told me, in a bossy tone, to kick him all the way back to his own room, but my body vetoed that decision. I'm starting to think my hormones have override power.

I did make an attempt, though. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I realized I never got the chance to taste your tattoo and I had to come and find out."

With that, I was a lost woman.

There was no good excuse for last night, no devilishly powerful Cuban concoctions, no pesky nosebleeds, but he showed up in my bed anyhow. I can't think of a single good reason to explain why I let him stay, let his tongue explore every nook and cranny of me, let him slide inside me and push me into the firm Marriott mattress.

Damn, I'm trying to come up with something here, but my brain is blanking. Sex makes me stupid, which is another good reason why I shouldn't be sleeping with my partner.

I've learned some new things about my partner during those three singular nights that will never, _ever_ happen again.

Mulder loves oral sex, both giving and receiving, but especially giving. He's not exactly known for his generosity, but he'd keep at it all night if I let him. He likes it best when I'm on top, which is handy, since that's how I like it, too. If you haven't guessed this about me, I like to be in charge of things. He has the best-smelling sweat I've ever had the pleasure of coating my body. Also, he's rather embarrassingly noisy, which is no real surprise, since he hardly ever shuts up in real life.

Oh, and he's also really, really, really good in bed.

Guess his video collection has been educational, or maybe they teach a special course at Oxford. No, I doubt that, the British aren't exactly famed for their prowess in bed. It's possibly because he applies his single-mindedness to sex. I'm not sure what his secret is, but the man should be kept under lock and key.

Now there's a tempting thought...

No. Bad thoughts. Got to keep the bad thoughts away.

I jump out of bed and pace the room like a lioness caged at the zoo.

Thou shall not covet thy partner.

Thou shall not think impure thoughts, especially the one where he reaches up and...

It will never happen again. I promise, I swear, no matter how much I want to feel him quaking under me, no matter how much I want his tongue in my mouth, no matter how much I may love him.

Wait, did I just think that? Oh God, I have it bad.

He just makes me so weak, in that slither out of my pantyhose way. He makes me wet with just the most innocent of touches.

How do you keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen the lights of Gay Paree?

How do I stop myself after tasting the crisp, juicy flesh of the accursed apple? I want some apple pie!

I'm pacing so much I'm probably wearing a tread in the gray carpeting of my hotel room. This is one of those nights I actually wished I smoked, so I could sit at the window and dramatically puff away, like Jeanne Moreau in one of her films of the 1950s, elegant and tormented at once.

I toss up my hands in defeat. Fine, I give up. I want him and I want him in a big way. I can't neatly push this wanting into the Mulder file and lock it away in the cabinet. It's an infection, an addiction. The only way my thirst can be slaked is to have more of him. Now.

Does it mitigate my sin to admit that I do love him?

Shrugging, I stalk to the connecting door and push it open. I hear the bedding rustle; he's no more awake than I am.

From the dark a chuckle emerges, and then his voice, "I knew you'd come tonight, Scully."

"That's entirely up to you, Mulder," I crack.

Smiling, I walk to the bed.

Bless me father, for I have sinned, as I am sinning now. There are no excuses this time. My flesh is weak.

But this is the last time. I swear, after tonight I will sin no longer.

At least, I think so.

END


	2. Delerium

You know, doctor, I used to consider myself a civilized man.

Then again, that was before the fever hit me -- before I touched my partner in a very unpartnerly way, and the red haze of lust drove me to her bed not once, not twice, but three separate times.

Sure, I've had a few bizarre theories in my life, and some oddball interests. Essentially, though, I always considered myself a buttoned-down, suit-and-tie sort of person, the product of good neighborhoods and the best schools and generation upon generation of hardheaded Yankee practicality. I had urges like the next man, but I never worried for a second that they were going to get the better of my rational side. After all, that's what separates us from the animals.

Or so I always thought. But where Scully is concerned, I suppose, I made the mistake of relying on her to be the rational one. She's the woman, after all, and what match is a man's rationality for a woman's, when it comes to sex? Especially when the man has the woman on the brain, in his blood, under his skin, and his fever just keeps climbing...

It's not like I could really have seen it coming, that first time. After a raw February in DC, a month of shabby President's Day sales and leaden skies and slush melting against the curbs, we were just relieved to find ourselves in Miami. The case wasn't much -- not very important, not very challenging. We were only there a day and a half before we'd wrapped it up and were ready to head home again. But we couldn't get a decent flight out until the next morning, and it was warm and sultry, and the night was young.

So we found ourselves on South Beach -- where Art Deco meets white sand, bohemian and funky and chic, a mythical sort of place peopled by barely-dressed women and hardbodied men with dark tans and white teeth. The whole strip throbbed to a conga beat, hot and crowded and electric. We found a Cuban restaurant that overlooked the beachfront and got the last available table outdoors.

Scully flirted like crazy with the waiter. It took me by surprise, the way she was so ready to smile at him. He was swarthy and charming and he rolled his Rs, and I would have felt decidedly threatened if I hadn't had the strong conviction that there was never going to be a Mrs. Alejandro. Scully let him talk us into ordering mojitos, and that was the beginning of the end. You see, what sounded like it was going to be a girlie drink actually wasn't, and the rum that laced my sugar-water burned its way hotly down my throat.

So we were sitting there drinking and waiting for our puerco asado. The sinking sun was glowing on the surf, and the girls on inline skates were swinging past in their string bikinis, and Scully's hair was blowing in the faint breeze. And as much as I was enjoying the view, the dark eyes and the long legs on the sweet young things, I also noticed just how many of the men around me kept turning to look at my pretty partner.

Or at least, the straight ones did: the young guys and the married men and the old Cuban gents in their guayabera shirts. Who could blame them? She had her chin cupped in her hand, and her eyes were shining, and the salt air had whipped her hair into a glorious mane that robbed her of any hint of offices and timecards and ordinary workday life.

She didn't look like my partner. She looked like a woman -- like a woman with sun-kissed cheeks and slightly swollen lips and maybe, just maybe, bedroom eyes.

But I was still being good. _Civilized._ My smile was abstract, and I was careful as we walked back to the hotel not to let my hand brush hers.

So could I help it if I needed my laptop? Could I help it if I had left it in her room? I picked it up and was even turning toward the door. In fact I really think I would have made it out, mojitos notwithstanding, if she hadn't been poised there at the window.

A storm was moving in. You could hear the thunder far off in the distance. The breeze was picking up, that thrilling tropic breeze that smells of palms and the Caribbean and sets the human heart to racing. As she stood there looking out, the sheer white window curtains lifted and billowed around her.

I just stopped and stared, struck to the bone. The *want* hit me so hard and so suddenly that it literally knocked the breath right out of me. I fought it for a second, gulping air, and then some primitive galvanic response shoved me powerfully in her direction.

I grabbed her arms and twisted her toward me, forcing her up against the wall. "Mul -- " she started to say, eyes wide, but I stopped her protest with my mouth.

I still don't understand what came over me. I only know there was a roaring in my ears, and heat licking at my veins, and I wanted my hands to be everywhere at once. I kissed her so hard I'm sure I bruised her lips. And then kissing wasn't enough, and hands weren't enough, and the bed was the only answer. Frenzied -- that's how it was. All night went like that, until by the time morning came, we were both battered and drained and I actually staggered when I tried to get up and walk.

But I did get up, and I did walk. And, lo and behold, civilization reasserted itself. A shower, a shave, a tie; soon I was sitting on the plane with Scully, talking business, and it was like the night had never happened.

Like it really never happened.

I never dared to bring it up. I was too ashamed. What do you say to your partner when rum and lust have gotten the better of you, and you've become a caveman? It wasn't rape, I knew; but it wasn't civilized either.

I was never going to do that again, I promised myself. I'd had a bad case of what Shakespeare called the fire in the blood, but that was past. I'd gotten it out of my system. I was a rational man, a Twentieth Century man, and I respected Scully too much not to keep those feelings under control.

Months passed. Cases came and went. Eventually serial murders took us to some godforsaken corner of Wisconsin, where we wound up in a foot chase on a dairy farm, trying to bring down a big, bloated con man who had lured five people to their deaths.

You have to admire the pluck of a woman who charges so fearlessly after a goon three times her size. I was running at a pretty good clip, but Scully was only a few feet behind me. It wasn't long before I caught the guy. He doubled over, wheezing, and I snapped the cuffs on his thick wrists. Then I turned back to check on Scully.

My heart stopped. She was standing several yards back, and blood was streaming from her nose. It ran over her lips and covered her chin. She was holding a tissue to her face, but it was red and her fingers were red and there was red dripping on her jacket.

I grabbed our suspect and yanked him almost off his feet, hauling his fat ass with me in a half-run to where she was standing. "Are you all right?" I demanded, fear lending my voice a breathless quality.

She didn't answer, just bobbed her head up and down a couple of times weakly. I stood and stared, my heart lodged in my throat. Oh God no, not that, not now...

She wiped ineffectually at the blood with her sodden tissue. "I fell," she mumbled. "I think I broke my nose."

I sagged with such intense relief that I had to brace myself with a hand on the suspect's shoulder to keep from losing my balance. It wasn't cancer. She'd just had an accident. She wasn't going to die on me just yet.

I'm sure it hurt, of course. I gave her my handkerchief, and she held it to her nose on the drive from the farm to the police station, wincing with every bump in the country roads. But she got it checked out at the hospital, and it wasn't broken. They just gave her a handful of acetaminophen samples and told her to keep it iced. I drove her back to our motel to get some rest.

I tried to lie down for a while myself, on the bed in my room, but I couldn't seem to relax. I still had the jitters from that field, remembering what it had felt like when I'd turned around and seen the blood flowing from Scully's nose. I got up and paced a little, trying to walk the feeling off. It didn't work. Finally I hunted through my pockets for change and took a stroll to the motel's vending machines.

I let myself in Scully's room as quietly as possible, in case she was sleeping, but she raised her head from the pillow as soon as I slipped in. "I just came to see how the patient is doing," I said, setting the Cokes and the ice bucket I'd brought on her night table.

She watched me from over the cold pack she was clutching to her swollen nose. "Very funny."

I sat down on the edge of her bed, feeling it dip under my weight. "You know, that scared the shit out of me," I said, trying to make it sound casual. Trying; but failing miserably.

She set her ice pack aside, and wiggled into a sitting position. "I'm fine."

It was what she always said, no matter how false it was, so it didn't comfort me at all. I hung my head and struggled for words to express the worry gnawing at me. Finally I managed, "For how long?"

She moved down the bed, and set her small hand on my shoulder. "No one knows how long they have."

I gave a hollow little laugh, more melancholy than accepting.

"Mulder," she chided, and put her arm around my shoulders.

It was a simple hug, nothing more. I smiled wanly, and turned to hug her back. It felt good, holding her in my arms. She felt warm and soft and reassuringly alive.

"Oh, Scully," I sighed. "It's so hard, sometimes."

She reached up to stroke my hair. "I know, Mulder."

I gently kissed her forehead. She looked up into my eyes and smiled. I smiled back. Slowly, I leaned in for a second kiss.

That's how the fever got the jump on me.

The next thing I knew we were lying on her bed, and I was tearing her clothes off her, and her willing hands were working at my buttons. I was breathing in harsh pants, kissing her, touching her, crushing her under me, frantic, wild-eyed, starving. The feeling built and built, until I was completely out of control; but even the furious culmination that followed just seemed to whet my appetite for more.

So much for my promises to myself.

Poor Scully never knew what hit her. I kept her up all night and into the morning like that, until the sun was high in the sky and I made myself get up and go back to my room. She fell into a deep sleep. In fact, it's probably a good measure of the abuse I'd put her through that at a quarter to three I had to use the fireman's carry to get her into the shower so we wouldn't miss our flight.

But I still couldn't talk with her about it. What apology is adequate to that sort of behavior? What excuse can a supposedly civilized man make for that kind of savage possessiveness?

And Boston...well, Boston was the worst bout yet.

We'd been in the city for four days, puzzling over the murders of six 900-number customers. All of them had been having extramarital affairs, all had sought help from psychic hotlines, and all had been found headless. Somerville and Cambridge, Brookline and Newton; we'd trekked all over the greater Boston area asking questions. Finally, we'd both agreed to call it a day.

At least in Miami I'd been drinking, and in Wisconsin I was still reeling from the grip of fear. Alcohol. Fear. Both operate powerfully on the limbic system, the primitive center of the human brain. But this had been a typical case, an ordinary day. I didn't even have an excuse.

Except maybe...well, it isn't an excuse, exactly, but Scully certainly looked lovely that day. And Boston reminded me of my adolescence, of hopping the ferry off the Vineyard and escaping for a while, of sunning in the grass by the Charles and flirting with the college girls, of lunch at the No-Name and baseball at Fenway -- in short, of everything that had then been good in my world.

Scully and I had dinner in the North End, in an Italian place which probably made no impression on her at all, but which rang with happy associations for me. I was all set to spend the evening showing her the town -- walking along the cobbled road past the Old North Church, maybe, and gazing out across the water toward Old Ironsides, or taking the T to the Common and strolling through the Public Gardens. But she pulled the rug out from under me. "I'm tired, Mulder," she said with a barely-concealed yawn. "I just want to go to bed."

So I sat alone in my hotel room, all keyed up with no place to go. I listened to the sounds through the connecting door, and pictured her undressing. I put the TV on and tried to get interested in a mafia movie. I thought about going out by myself, and decided it would just be too pathetic, a thirty-seven year old man out mingling with all the college kids. I did sit-ups until my abs burned.

And then I thought some more about Scully...

The next thing I knew I was opening the door into her room. It was like an out of body experience: I could see myself walking to the bed and lifting the sheet, and yet I seemed to have no power to stop myself from doing it. She was lying on her side, turned away from me. She wasn't wearing a thing. As I slipped into bed beside her, I could make out the dim outline of her tattoo in the darkness. I had to know how it tasted --

Do you see what I mean? These are not the actions of a rational man.

Why she didn't throw me out I'll never know. But that's something I've come to realize about Scully: she looks all proper and contained on the outside, but on the inside she's like a banked fire waiting to blaze up. And I am acquainted with the inside of Scully, intimately acquainted...

She lets me lose myself, if that makes any sense. When I'm making love to her, I can forget the real world and my real worries. Not that she makes me do all the work; not by a long shot. She doesn't mind it when I just lie on my back and stare up at her while she's on top. She doesn't seem to mind anything I do. Do you know what it's like to be with a woman in bed, and have her so turned on, she's purring under you? God, if they could bottle that feeling, it would make oxygen obsolete.

Which is why I think I could spend my whole life with my head between her thighs. Yes, I would happily live that way, letting the room service trays stack up in the hotel hallway, if only Scully would let me. Who needs food and a paycheck and the light of day, when the alternative is making Scully moan? Not me.

What a dangerous notion...

This kind of thinking could bring civilization to its knees.

Damn it, what's wrong with me? I'm supposed to be a sensible man. I have an Oxford degree and a good job and commendations out the yin-yang. How did I get this caught up in her?

It's a fever, I'm telling you. A disease. There has to be some kind of medical term for this condition. It deserves a label, this power she has to make me hard even when I'm trying my best not to think of her that way. A Latin label, I mean. I already know I love her.

Yeah, I love her. I figured that part out all by myself.

Which is stupid, isn't it? Stupid because it's so one-sided. I mean, every single time it's been me forcing myself on her: me taking advantage of the mojitos in Miami, me twisting her sympathy into something it wasn't in Wisconsin, me stealing into her room like a common thief last night. Scully's never once made a move in my direction. Love? I'm just deluding myself. This one-sided thing is properly called stalking.

But I can't help it, when I keep learning so many spellbinding Scully secrets. Her tattoo tastes like the salt on a margarita glass, like pure serendipity, like finding a lottery ticket and hitting the jackpot. She's shy about making noise, but she loves it when I kiss her neck. And do you know what? I just found out last night that Scully will laugh if I crack a joke in bed. Not just smile tightly in that haha-very-funny-you-poor-immature-loser kind of way, but really laugh, a wonderful sexy throaty laugh. Especially if she's just come. Who knew nice Catholic girls could be so deliciously abandoned?

One thing they say about Catholic girls is certainly true: they do give the best head. I know, I probably shouldn't have let that particular personal detail slip, but I just couldn't help it. You'd talk too much, too, if you were this ridiculously grateful.

What a curse, what an unfunny cosmic joke it's so damn one-sided. One-sided gratitude. One-sided delirium. What I wouldn't give if, just once, Scully were to make the first move. Then I could tell myself it wasn't entirely my problem. Then I could dream that I wasn't the only one in the grip of this disease.

Maybe I should just stop beating myself up about it. Sure I'm out of control, but she's sapped my resolve. How can I possibly keep my hands off her in this weakened state? How can I possibly think clearly when I'm on fire for her? I'm not responsible. Besides, you know what they always say -- starve a cold, feed a fever.

Anyway, is it really so wrong when I love her?

Jeez, I'm a sick man. A sick, sick man. I have no sense any more of what's reality and what's just self-justification. I'm lying here trying to make sense of something that has no rhyme or reason.

Lying here, not the least little bit able to sleep...

I hear soft footfalls. The connecting door swings slowly open. I look over in surprise.

Scully comes through the doorway into my room. Her faint smile simultaneously questions my absence from her bed and dares me to remedy the oversight.

Huh?

Well, what do you know.

I hide my amazement behind a teasing comment. "I knew you'd come tonight, Scully."

Her smile widens, and she moves slowly towards me, hips swaying. I watch her with a galloping heart.

Okay, maybe I'll make just one more promise to myself: This time, I'm not going to lose my cool.

Well, not much, anyway.

END


	3. Slow

  
Morning comes far too quickly for my taste. One eye pops open and then the next and the morning check-in begins. Where am I this time? Boston, the psychic hotline case. Where am I sleeping? Oh yeah, the Marriott. Who is next to me?

Someone is next to me?

Oh God, I inwardly groan, my eyes involuntarily shutting against the morning light streaming through the open drapes. Not again. Please don't tell me that's Mulder sawing wood next to me.

It is. Fuck.

It all comes back to me in a sweaty and frantic rush and I bury my face in the too-soft hotel pillow, which has the unfortunate quality of smelling just like his skin. I can't even take refuge in a simple pillow these days.

With infinite stealth, I creep out of bed and gather my t-shirt and panties, which are tangled in an intimate heap with Mulder's underclothes. I tiptoe out of the room, but Mulder doesn't move a millimeter, simply continues to snore away in his own little world of oblivion. That nose of his can produce a lot of noise. Well, he's tired, poor thing. I kept him up most of the night.

In my own room, where the bed is neatly, and tellingly, made, I decide I should go running. Yes, wholesome physical effort will clear my mind. My gym teacher in seventh grade, Sister Rose Claudia, told us, "When you have impure thoughts, girls, that is when you need to exercise your temple of the Lord." I'll sweat out the Mulderinfection in the streets of Boston.

As I'm lacing up my Nikes, the ringing of my cell phone on the bureau startles me. "Scully," I mumble.

A flat, nasal Bostonian voice greets me. "Agent Scully? It's Detective Rourke."

"Oh hello, what's going on?" We've been working with him since we arrived in the city.

He barks out a laugh. "It's your lucky day. We caught the dude, one Duane Allen Henderson, a former employee of the service. Found him knee-deep in the blood of his latest victim."

My breath catches in my throat. "Do you need me to come down and do the autopsy?"

"Nah, county coroner's coming in this morning. Henderson is plum fucking crazy, we found him raving about how the Superstars Psychic Hotline was transmitting messages to a radio in his head. We carted him off to the psych ward at Mass. General. The admitting said you guys can come up in the late afternoon to question him, after he's completed all the intake stuff."

"Thanks, Detective."

"Hey, it's early yet. Go back to bed."

I hang up the phone and grin. Happy, happy day, a normal resolution on a case. It's time for a celebratory run.

On the elevator down to the lobby, I loll against the wall and my mind goes back to last night, how I was the one who crept into Mulder's room. How our bodies crashed together on the bed and didn't separate until an obscenely late hour. My face turns a most attractive shade of beet red as I realize I'm sharing the elevator with two nuns in full habit. I didn't even know they still wore those things.

This is definitely a sign from God.

Down quiet Saturday morning Boston streets, tinted amber by the rising sun, I run, pushing myself to go faster, harder. Sweat it all out, yeah that's it. With each step I shed my wanting, my desire. Goodbye illicit hotel room sex. Farewell, naked Mulder.

After four miles, I begin to feel like my old self again. I may be dripping and messy on the outside, but inside I'm once again cool, collected Dana Scully.

I knew I could do it. It just takes a little willpower, that's all.

Next door to the Marriott there's a ubiquitous Starbucks and I go inside and order a grande iced skim latte for myself and because I'm a nice person, a big cup of Kenyan for Mulder. That, and two sour cherry muffins. Can't skip breakfast, it's the most important meal of the day, you know.

Up in my room, I debate for a second about the wisdom of going into Mulder's room. I don't want to wake him up and start an embarrassing conversation about last night's activities. Silence is golden has always been my favorite adage. Finally I decide I'll just dash in, dump the goodies on the bedside table and dash back out before he awakens. Call it a little visit from the Scully Fairy, she of the fine-quality coffee and baked goods.

I pad in, bag and cup in hand, to the sight of my partner sprawled on his back, the sheet tangled around his feet. And, hoo boy, he's sporting one monstrous erection. How does he do that? He's pushing forty and after last night's romp you'd think he'd be as limp as a three day-old party balloon. I may have taken several physiology courses in my life but I still fail to fully understand the workings of the male body. Not to mention the male mind, but no one understands that.

I set the stuff down on the bedside table and turn to walk out of the room, but some bizarre force makes me turn back around to look at him.

Damn, damn, damn, I scream at myself, we discussed this! No more sex with Mulder!

I've never seen him fully nude by the light of day and I have to admit that on a purely aesthetic level, he's a pretty sight. Long, slender, tightly muscled body, for once quiet and still. My hand reaches out to touch the puckered scar tissue under his right shoulder. How many women can say they shot a man and still made love to him at a later date?

Yes, I'm one tough broad.

Mulder's eyes snap open. Uh-oh, I'm busted. He mumbles something incoherent.

"I brought you some breakfast," I say briskly, pretending not to notice the hard-on, which is akin to pretending not to notice he's sprouted another eye during the night.

He sits up and wipes his eyes. "What time is it?"

"Just after seven."

Mouth dropping open, he says, "Shit, we have to go and interview that witness in Allston."

I laugh. "Nope, Boston PD caught our man this morning, literally red-handed, a psychotic former employee for the Superstars service. We don't have to be anywhere until this morning. Have a sour cherry muffin."

His eyes light up like a little boy unwrapping an air rifle on Christmas morning. "Muffins?" He gleefully grabs for the bag.

How can Mulder just sit there and pretend he's not buck naked? Maybe he really spends his vacation time at those tacky nudist colonies, playing volleyball and barbecuing in the buff with pudgy couples from trailer parks.

"Enjoy your breakfast," I say. "I just went running and I need a shower." I turn around.

A hand reaches out and grabs my forearm. "Not so fast, Scully," he says through a mouthful of muffin.

Oh no, I think, as my stomach does a sudden lurch.

"Have breakfast with me."

I shake my head. He's not going to trick me, not sitting here naked as a newborn. It'll take something a lot more subtle than that to fool this woman. "I have to take a shower."

"I like the way you smell," he rasps.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, give me strength and fortitude in my time of need. But it's too late for divine intervention, I'm getting wet already. With one swift tug, he pulls me to the bed and I tumble atop him like a pile of dirty laundry.

Red alert, red alert, flash my internal sensors as he yanks off my running shoes and hurls them in towards the dresser. Two more pulls and my shorts and sports bra are somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom door.

"Admit it," he growls.

"Admit what?"

"You want me." He places my hand around the silken hardness of his cock. "You want this."

Oh boy.

His mouth crushes against mine. "Tell me," he mutters into my lips.

Tipping my head back, I sigh as his hand makes its lazy way up my thigh. "Okay," I moan, half in annoyance, half in arousal. "I give up. Uncle. I want you, Mulder."

He snorts a laugh. "I knew you weren't sleepwalking last night." A new, devilish thought enters my addled brain. Why deny myself  
all this?

Is it wrong? Yes.

Do I care? Not right now as he crouches between my legs and shoves his tongue between my folds. Nope, I really don't give a shit. Amazing how a little oral sex can just wipe away all the rules for myself I have set over the years.

Let's face it, I tell myself, as I squirm against the pillows at his ministrations, he's a bad boy, a punk, the kind of man my mother warned me about when I hit puberty. He runs around with his cell phone and black leather jacket, thinking he's God's gift to the fairer sex and the horrible thing is, he's right. He makes me want to heave desk chairs at him, I can get so angry at his cockiness, but now I admit I also want to fuck him blind.

Having sex with Mulder doesn't mean I still don't get the urge to throw office furniture at him. Nothing's changed in that respect.

Mulder pulls him mouth away from me and gives me a decidedly evil look.

"What are you doing?" I demand from the other side of the bed.

He moves up so his face is level with mine. "Too quick," he mutters.

"Huh?" I hate it when he gets oblique with me.

Smoothing away the hair from my forehead, he puts his face so close to mine we nearly touch. "Every time we've been together it's been too fast. This time we're in the daylight, and I want to take my time to touch you, to taste you. I want it slow..." His voice trails off as his lips head for that particularly sensitive area that lies where my neck and clavicle meet.

Slow it is, probably classified as torture by Amnesty International. However, there are rewards, and one of them is making Mulder shout my name. I may have shouted his, too, but I'm taking the Fifth on that one.

A few hours later I awake from a brief spell of sleep and this time, waking to see Mulder next to me doesn't send me into near-cardiac arrest. Instead, I chuckle at the way his mouth is hanging open and head for that long-awaited shower, my legs feeling like rubber appendages.

In the shower I use up all of Mulder's complimentary Marriott shampoo and conditioner.

When I step out of the bathroom, wrapped in a big towel, I hear Mulder's voice on the phone. "Great, we'll be there at 8:00."

I totter to the bed and sit down, wincing in pain. Mulder hangs the phone up and turns to me, a silly grin on his face. "Who was that?" I ask.

"Durgin Park, a Boston institution. We need to fatten you up with Indian Pudding."

I flash him one of my patented looks. "Mulder, the case is largely over. Hadn't we better go home tonight?"

He pulls on my towel, letting it fall open. Oh no, not again, my poor body screams. My hormones tell another story, though. "Nope," he says as his hands begin to do their maddening little roving thing. "We're staying tonight, having a nice dinner and then we're going for a walk through beautiful Boston. I'm gonna show you all my favorite spots."

"Sounds like a plan," I gasp, as his fingers have found that spot, oh yes, that spot that turns me into a certifiable case.

Bless me, father, for I have--

Never mind that. I have better things to do than confess right now.

END


	4. Good Intentions

Something jars me awake. I open my eyes, and confirm that something is, indeed, different about my surroundings: Scully is in my room. She is standing over me. I am naked, and the bed smells like sex, and Scully is standing over me.

Oh, my God, I groan inwardly. I did it again. What is _wrong _with me?

I don't care if Scully did come over to my room last night, this is just...this is...I need to put the brakes on this, okay? This isn't right. I work with her. I respect her. I'm not supposed to, to, to -- to do what we did last night.

No wonder she's staring at me with a look of fascinated revulsion.

She's wearing running clothes. I can tell that she's already been up and about like every other intelligent, responsible adult in this part of the world. I, on the other hand, am lying here sprawled naked in a tangle of twisted sheets. I try to start an apology, but since I have no idea how to begin it just ends up a mumble.

She averts her eyes, and I follow the path of her former gaze down to my lap. I'm sporting my usual morning erection. Well, she's a doctor -- she must know that that's completely involuntary, right? Please tell me she knows that.

I rub my eyes and sit up. "What time is it?" I ask, hoping to suggest that my mind is really on the job.

"Just after seven."

Oh, shit, I'm screwed. My mouth falls open. "We have to go and interview that witness in Allston..."

She shakes her head. "Nope, Boston PD caught our man this morning." She goes on to explain how our decapitating killer tripped himself up.

But I'm not really listening. I just keep thinking, oh shit, oh shit, this has to stop. I can't do this any more. Maybe this time I got a reprieve. Maybe I'm not screwed after all. But I could have been. I could have really messed things up, lying here like I've been drugged, sleeping off the effects of another tryst that shouldn't have happened. What was I thinking last night? How did I let myself get out of control like that? How did I rationalize away all the one hundred and one important reasons that I'm supposed to keep my hands off of my partner?

Or did I rationalize them away at all...? As I recall, any claim I had to rationality went flying out the door at the very same instant that Scully came  
strolling in.

Face it, I am the biggest dumbfuck in the whole world.

Scully breaks in on my self-recriminations by holding out a Starbucks bag. I take it from her hand without thinking, in a conditioned response that would make Pavlov proud. Self-recrimination or no, I am starving.

"Thanks," I say, shoving my hand in the bag and encountering a muffin. I'm too hungry to bother peeling the paper off of the thing first. I just greedily eat it right out of the wrapper, cramming about two-thirds of it into my mouth at once. It's cranberry or something. It's good.

God, I'm a pig.

Apparently Scully thinks so, too. "Enjoy your breakfast," she says, turning away. "I just went running and I need a shower."

I'm not just a dumbfuck, I realize, I'm an unappreciative dumbfuck. I reach out and catch her by the arm. "Not so fast. Have breakfast with me," I say, in a tone intended to promise self-control.

And I really mean to control myself, too. Unfortunately I tug her back toward the bed hard enough that she tumbles on top of me. She is wearing nothing but running shorts and an abbreviated little top. Her skin is flushed and sweaty from her jog. She smells like Scully, only ratcheted up about five notches.

Oh, God. I knew nature gave me these morning erections for some reason.

"Mulder," she says, turning her face away, "I'm all sweaty -- "

Or at least, I think that's what she says. I'm not hearing too well right now. It's hard for me to hear when pheromones are sounding red alert signals in my head. I tug her clothes off her and toss them on the floor, encouraged when I meet with no resistance.

Amazing how a man can go from good intentions to lascivious designs in a matter of seconds. I'm so turned on that I wouldn't know a good intention now if it showed me two forms of picture ID. I take her hand and put in on my cock. Yeah, smooth move. Like she doesn't know where it is otherwise; she's a fucking doctor, for god's sake...

"Admit it," I hear myself say. "You want me. You want this."

You want this? What under-evolved corner of my brain did that come from?

She rolls her eyes. "Mulder..."

I kiss her. "Tell me," I urge desperately against her mouth. "Tell me, Scully."

She sighs in annoyance. "Okay, I give up. Uncle. I want you, Mulder."

She said uncle. I suppose that means I'm supposed to let her go. Instead I laugh a little breathlessly. "I knew it," I say, or something equally giddy, and blithely head south.

I can't believe she's letting me do this, I think as I bury my face between her thighs. It's the best flavor in the world, the essence of Scully, and right now I'm the only person on this planet who gets to enjoy it. I close my eyes and trace slow hedonistic patterns with my tongue, savoring the sweet soft wetness of her, as happy as a kid licking icing from a spoon.

It doesn't take long at all before Scully is squirming and breathing in soft little gasps. She's so quiet but so beautiful, her face framed against the pillow. I know if I keep going she'll come soon. And after that happens I'll cover her body with mine, and I'll slide inside her still-shuddering body, and before you know it I'll be the one who's gasping...

No.

That's not the way it's going to happen this time. That's too quick, too abandoned. I've got to salvage at least some of those good intentions.

I lift my face and look at her. Really _look_ at her. God, she's beautiful.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Too quick," I say. I move up the bed to join her face-to-face. Maybe I lack the kind of willpower that would have allowed me to keep my hands off her this morning, but at least I can show a little restraint -- enough restraint that we can really enjoy this, enjoy it slowly and thoroughly.

Yes.

I have to go slow this time, I think. That's the only way that I'm going to get these insane impulses completely out of my system.

I have to go slow. Because I promise myself that today is the last time, the absolute last time, that I'm ever going to do this again.

Ever.

  
Durgin Park is the perfect place to take Scully for dinner: it's a Boston landmark set in a Boston landmark. The restaurant has been around for more than a hundred and fifty years. It's part of a market complex in the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the gracious pre-Revolutionary brick building in which colonial Bostonians once gathered to undermine British rule.

It is also about as far from sexy as a restaurant can be.

Durgin Park is famous for the surliness of its waitresses, tart-tongued authoritarians who talk back to the customers. It's a place of clattering dishes and noisy conversation, in which parties of diners are made to share long wooden tables with perfect strangers. They don't serve spicy dishes and trendy wines at Durgin Park. No, instead you get nice bland Yankee comfort food, chowders and Indian pudding and New England boiled dinner, the kind of food my mother used to serve me when I was sick.

Scully looks around at the tin ceiling and the mustard-colored walls. She is obviously taken aback by the way New England quaintness masquerades as dingy utilitarianism.

"Nice place," she says under her breath.

"Yeah, we got plenny a chahm," a passing waitress agrees without a hint of irony.

At our table we sit side-by-side with a family of tourists from New York and a group of locals. One of the local kids keeps bumping Scully with his elbow. "Sorry. This place is wicked crowded at suppa on a Saddadee," he says, in a sort of all-purpose apology.

Safe, I think as I order the pot roast and the mashed potatoes. I'm safe here. I don't have to worry about the stirring effects of coconut oil and rum-laced drinks, or even of pasta and red wine. It's loud and jam-packed and dependable. No man ever jumped a woman's bones in Durgin Park.

Since our little stray into carnality earlier today I'm pleased to report that I haven't felt the slightest urge to overstep the bounds of partnership. Scully and I spent the morning together and once I got the sex out of my system everything seemed fine again. We interviewed our captured suspect and still had time for sight-seeing, taking in the famous stops on the FreedomTrail and the poetry of college kids rowing crew on the Charles. We talked and we kidded and we covered a lot of ground. I never once felt like I might do something I shouldn't.

I congratulate myself on my resolve. Maybe that's all I needed, to go slow and let the experience sink in instead of rushing headlong into passion. I worked with her for more than five years without a hint of anything sexual, after all. Maybe I just needed to really take my time, once and for all, so that we could put the tension and the sex behind us.

"Here you go," says the waitress, setting a platter of prime rib down in front of Scully. The enormous slab of meat hangs off the plate on either end.

Scully looks up at me in amazement. "People really eat this much?"

"Wicked bizah, isn't it?" I say in my best Boston accent.

Oh, yes, I am back to my old self again. I don't feel anything remotely like passion. I look down into my mashed potatoes and smile with relief. This is going to work out after all.

  
We take the T back to the hotel. There is something about the Boston subway, about the rattling way it shoots through the darkened tunnels, which always seemed outrageously Freudian to me. As a teen-ager I actually used to get turned-on by it. Of course, as a teen-ager I used to get turned-on by pretty much everything. The new me, the thirty-eight year old me, is fortunately much more resistant to things like that.

Yes, this new resolve is working out pretty well. Scully is sitting at my side, balancing herself with each shimmy and swerve of the moving train. Now and then the car lurches unexpectedly and, in accordance with Newton's Laws of Motion, she falls against me. It doesn't faze me a bit. She's just my partner.

I'm feeling wonderfully sanguine right now. I'm full of pot roast and Indian pudding, and all is right with the world. That restlessness I felt before this morning, that driving hunger for Scully's body, has completely disappeared. I'm sane again. It's a wonderful feeling.

We reach Copley Square, and the train slows to a stop. We get to our feet. The doors hiss open and we exit together. The stairs out of the subway station smell like Boston subway station stairs always do, like a urinal. Even that is comforting. It's a very nonsexual thing, trudging with Scully up stairs that reek of urine.

We emerge onto Boylston Street and turn toward Huntington Avenue. The cool night air has that penetrating quality that belongs uniquely to Boston on a Saturday night. The lights of the city are bright, and Copley Square is alive with people out on the town, sociable students and well-dressed urbanites.

"I had fun today," Scully says as we walk the short distance to the hotel. It is clear from the way she says it that she is referring to everything after the hotel room and the sex. And that comforts me, too; she seems as resolved as I am to put our relationship back on safer footing.

"Me, too."

"Early flight tomorrow, huh?"

"Yeah. Very early."

We take the elevator to our floor. She stops at the door to her room and I continue on to mine, the door beside hers. I reach in my pocket for my card key, and slip it in the electronic lock. "Good night, Scully," I say, opening my door.

"Mulder, I can't find my key." She rummages in her purse, frowning. "I must have left it in my room."

I hold my door open for her. "Come on, you can get in through mine."

She walks past me into my room. I snap on the light, and she goes directly to the connecting door. She moves briskly, as if to emphasize that the absence of her key is an oversight and not some romantic stratagem.

She disappears into her room. As she does so, I spot her key on my dresser. "It's in here," I call through the open door. "I found it."

I pick it up and go through the connecting door. She hasn't switched on her lights yet.

I try to discern her outline in the darkness. "Scully? You okay in here?"

"I just stopped to take off my shoes, Mulder," she says. I hear the thud of a boot hitting the floor, and then another. "My feet are killing me."

"Oh. Your key was on my dresser."

My eyes are adjusting to the dimness. I can just make out her small form. She approaches me, silent on stocking feet.

She stops only an inch or two in front of me. "Thanks," she says, taking the key from my outstretched hand.

"Sure."

"Well...good night, then."

"Good night."

But instead of turning around and going back through the door, I reach out for her and find her mouth with my own in the darkness. My arms slide around her, and hers wrap about my shoulders. She makes a soft sound in her throat, and threads her fingers through the hair at the back of my head.

Minutes pass. I'm not sure how many, but I know that it's minutes, plural, that we kiss like that.

Finally I lift my head. "This is wrong," I say.

"Yes," she agrees. "Very wrong."

"We shouldn't be doing this."

"No. No, we shouldn't."

I bend my head again, and kiss her.

She is so sweet, is my Scully. So sweet and so soft and so unbelievably beautiful. So perfect in every sense...

One more night isn't going to hurt my resolve that much, is it?

  
END


	5. Chocolate

On Friday night, I fight rush hour traffic and make it home with a sense of relief. Shutting the front door behind me, I lock and chain it with care. After turning on my lamps I survey my tidy and familiar apartment and sigh with pleasure. It's Friday and I'm home alone. Other single women my age may be getting ready to hit the bars and clubs of Georgetown, but I'm perfectly content to have a Friday night spent in the bathtub with a good book and lots of bubbles.

Yes, it's sheer relief I'm feeling tonight. I made it, we made it through a week in the office together. After four days spent in Boston tracking a serial murderer and shagging Mulder silly at the Marriott, I thought it was a well-nigh impossible task. Nah, it was a piece of cake. We just had to put the past behind us and exercise some restraint. So what if I had to go running twice a day and wear my ugliest underpants (the baggy polyester numbers that go clear past my bellybutton) in to the office? It did the trick, right? I stayed on my side of the office, and he on his. We chatted pleasantly about professional matters only and at the end of the day we said our civilized good-byes and repaired home to our separate apartments. By 10 pm every night I was in my pajamas and headed off to sleep.

And no, it doesn't count if you do it in your dreams.

Despite the fact it's early May, it's rather cool outside, having rained all day, and I light a fire, craving the cozy glow it casts on the walls of my living room. Then I run a hot bath, dumping in several capfuls of Tranquility Bay bath oil. I breathe in the soothing mixture of rosemary and comfrey and immediately begin to feel the tension in my neck and shoulders dissipate.

It's nights like these I treasure. Too often I'm on the road in some dump of a motel with a shower only, usually a shower with all the water pressure of your average Water Pik. I'm not home nearly often enough to enjoy the creature comforts of my own home and the pleasure of my own company. If you can't be your own best friend, what does that say about you as a person?

I uncork a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a pour a glass to take to the tub. Back in the bathroom I light one of the vanilla-scented candles Ellen gave me for my birthday and switch off the lights. Sinking into the warm, fragrant water, I sip the wine and shut my eyes. This is perfection, right here.

Who needs a man when I have a hot bath and good wine? Who needs the trouble of a man, especially a man as troublesome as Fox Mulder, when I have a perfectly serviceable vibrator? Sure, good sex is nothing to sneeze at, but why make my life any more complicated than it already is? I mean, do I really want to wake up every morning to his snoring and blatant cover stealing? To wake up with his morning erection pressed up against my buttocks and his roving hands?

Okay, that wasn't a good question. Don't go there, my brain tells me in a stern tone, and I sip more of the smooth wine, letting it roll over my tongue and down my throat.

The final morning in Boston, Mulder and I woke at the same time and sheepishly looked at each other through bleary eyes and tangled hair. "One more for the road?" he rasped in his morning voice.

I shrugged, trying not to smile. "One more time won't kill us," I said. "I mean, we're already here and everything."

But I must confess something. When we were having sex that final time, there was a point when I looked down at him and he up at me and I realized we were heading somewhere dangerous. Pleasure was beginning to wash through me as I rocked on him, but I looked at him and caught an expression on his face of such awe, tenderness and, yes, love that the breath caught in my throat. And I began to feel those same feelings welling in my chest and a few tears trickled down my cheeks, landing on his chest. Staring down at Mulder through the glassiness of tears, I noticed his eyes were looking a little watery, too. I came just then in a maelstrom of tears, frustration and pleasure and he, too, a minute behind me, the two of us alternately weeping and laughing.

I rolled off him and wiped my wet face, thinking, what the hell happened here? And then I realized we hadn't merely had sex, we had made love and my heart sunk. My pulse began to race and not in a good way, either. It was entirely one thing to tumble into bed with my partner as an act of hormonal rebellion, but for it to escalate to an act of love was a whole different set of problems. I reminded myself of each and every reason why it was a bad, bad thing to love Mulder as I attempted to get my breathing to calm.

He kissed my sweaty forehead and I shut my eyes. Thank God this was the last time, I thought. 

"Our plane is in two hours," he muttered.

"I'm up, I'm up…" After yawning and a good stretch, I headed to my own room to shower and dress.

I showered like I had been contaminated in an accident at a nuclear power plant. And through it all, I cried. I sobbed at the unfairness that I had to meet Mulder as my partner, that we were so opposed yet so oddly alike, that our lives were so marked by danger that one of us was sure to be killed any day now, that we were so marred by our experiences we were truly the only ones suitable for the other, that I had the bad fortune to fall for the one man I couldn't, shouldn't have.

After the shower and the cathartic weeping I felt entirely better. Temporary madness, I told myself as I dropped Visine into my swollen eyes and again slapped on foundation to cover the purple love bites on my neck. PMS, overload from another road trip and too much sex, that's all it was. I dressed in my navy pantsuit and again felt like I had donned my suit of armor.

Everything would return to normal. We simply needed to spend some time apart.

It will all work out just fine, I tell myself and drain my glass of wine. It was merely a strange period in our relationship, perfectly natural when two reasonably attractive people spend so many years in close proximity, like two polar bears caged together at the zoo.

Smirking at the image of Mulder and me, displayed in a cage at the San Diego Zoo, I step out of the cooled water and towel myself off. From the living room I hear the shrill ring of the telephone. It has to be my mother; I haven't talked to her since before the trip to Boston.

Wrapping the bath towel around me, I run for the phone. "Hello," I say, breathless from the dash from the bathroom.

"Hey, Scully, what are you wearing?" Shit, it's Mulder.

"It's Friday night, Mulder. What do you want?"

It had better not be what I think it is.

*

I listen to the phone ring once…twice...three times. Scully doesn't answer. Part of me, the cautious, rational part, almost hopes she isn't home. 

But she answers just after the fourth ring. "Hello."

If Scully ever grows wise to the fact that she's too good for government work, she could have a spectacular future as a phone-sex operator. Her voice makes my toes curl. "Hey, Scully, what are you wearing?"

"It's Friday night, Mulder. What do you want?"

The sharpness of her tone is like balm to my wounded soul. Not because I need to hear that she's happy I called, but because that's the last thing I need to hear. I'm not touching Scully again, not with a ten-foot pole. Nope, nah-unh, not gonna do it. Since getting back to D.C. with her last Sunday I've lived through a week of sheer hell. From eight until five every day I hid non-stop behind my desk, breaking into a cold sweat every time that she looked at me. It was one of the roughest weeks of my life, but by God, I made it through. I'm finally cured of Scully Fever.

"I just, uh, wondered if I could ask a little favor of you, Scully."

"A favor?" Suspicion drips from each syllable.

"Scully, this is all completely open and above-board. I'm just calling, mano a mano, in the hope that you will take pity on my outcast state."

"Your outcast state? Mulder, what in the hell are you talking about?"

I close my eyes in masochistic pleasure. Ah, yes Scully, abuse me, berate me, put me in place. Don't let me forget what a total fuck-up I've been. "Well, you see, at the moment I'm sort of homeless..."

"What's wrong with your apartment?"

"It's a little crowded, Scully. As in, there's a party going on there right now, and I just spent the last twenty minutes watching two college kids making out. I mean, I wasn't actually watching them, I was trying not to watch them, but it's kind of difficult when they're doing it right in front of you—"

"Mulder, what are you talking about?"

I sigh. "My cousin Seth is in town, my mom's sister's kid. He's just a junior in college and when I heard he was going to be in D.C. I offered to let him stay at my place for the weekend. What I didn't know when I made the offer was that he would arrive with his girlfriend in tow. Now he's there and she's there, and so are about twenty friends of theirs. My place seems to be the site of an impromptu kegger."

"And you're telling me this because...?" 

"Scully, I'm too old for a keg party. I know that you'll find that difficult to believe, I know you've probably been taken in by my boyish looks and my bottomless joie de vivre, but it's true. I can't drink beer from a funnel any more."

"So? Kick them out."

"Scully, he's my cousin. And he's a nice kid, too, despite having the worst taste in music since...well, since you. I can't kick him out."

"Then get a hotel room."

"Scully," I plead, "come on. I don't want to spend the night in a hotel. And before you get the wrong idea, I don't want to spend the night at your place, either. I just need somewhere to hang out for a few hours, until this party dies down. I called the guys but Langly is having some kind of Dungeons and Dragons thing tonight, and, frankly, I'd rather watch college kids make out than have to call grown men by their elf names." 

"Mulder—no."

"I wouldn't ask if I weren't desperate. You won't even know I'm there. I'll just come over, I'll do a little writing on my laptop, and I'll leave. I'm finishing something for Omni and I just need some peace and quiet."

"Mulder, this is a bad, bad idea."

"Don't you trust me, Scully?" 

I know even as the words are leaving my mouth that they are a huge mistake. Of course she doesn't trust me, not when it comes to spending time alone with her. Why should she trust me after the way I behaved last week in Boston? But I am a changed man now, a cured man. I'm not going to make that mistake again.

No, never, never. And not only because I successfully survived the recovery this week, the slow painful process of sitting haggardly at my desk and trying not to watch her every move. The difficult convalescence is not something I would gladly go through again, but it was nothing compared to the crisis that scoured the fever right out of me. I will never forget that; never forget that the last time we were in bed together, I made Scully cry.

I made her cry. I was a sick, selfish, weak-willed bastard, and I made Scully cry.

"Come on, Scully. Please," I say. I know I could go to a hotel. I could go to a bar. I could go to the adult movie theatre across town, and numbly spend the evening watching plastic women fake it. But I want to be with Scully. I want to prove to her I am over my affliction, and that she doesn't have to be afraid to be alone with me anymore. I want to know I'm forgiven, so maybe I can start to forgive myself. "Please."

She sighs. "On one condition." Her voice is like ice. "But only then, and the condition is not negotiable."

I steel myself to hear what she has to say. I have to keep my hands in plain view at all times? I can't speak to her? Can't look at her? Whatever it is, I will do it. I have not stopped hating myself for six days now. "Shoot."

"Mulder, it’d Friday night, and my weekend. I'm not cooking for you. I'm not cooking for myself, either. If you want to come over, you have to bring me food."

I let my breath out. "Is that all? Scully, I will not only bring you food, I will bring you the best-smelling food you've ever encountered. Seth's girlfriend baked brownies today and when I came home my whole apartment smelled like a Hershey factory."

"Brownies?" she says in a hopeful voice.

"Yep, Scully. I'm bringing you chocolate." 

*

The first stage is Denial. No, that was not Mulder on my phone making up some lame-ass excuse to spend the evening at my place. It was my dear, sweet mother, who wanted to know if I cared to join her for Mass and brunch on Sunday. Just my mother, and now I'm going to curl up on the couch with my copy of "Cold Mountain" and do some supremely cozy reading on a Friday night.

The second stage is Anger. How dare he invade my private time like that! It's bad enough he feels free to call at all hours of the day and night to get me to join him on some paranormal goose chase, usually in the most decrepit rural town Mulder can find on short notice. Now he thinks just because we slept together a time or two on the road, that he can just stop over and fill up my personal hours with his lanky, noisy presence.

The third stage is Sabotage. I grab my white cotton panties with the ugly roses on them, the ones that have all the sex appeal of a nun and yank them on. Call it Mulder Insurance, as there is no way I would let anyone of the opposite sex catch me in these. On top of the panties I add my blue plaid pajama bottoms and the gray University of Maryland sweatshirt with green paint stains across the bottom. There, I'm about the furthest thing from sexually desirable you can get. In fact, I should be rented out to strictly Catholic families as a form of Natural Family Planning.

The fourth stage is Indulgence. God, what kind of friend am I? So what if we recently had a few tumbles in bed, he's still my friend and he needs me tonight. I mean, if some cousin of mine had invaded my house, I would probably try to seek refuge at Mulder's. This will be just fine, a nice test of how we've gotten each other out of the system. Besides, it will be kind of nice to have someone around on a Friday. He's bringing over food and maybe we can watch a movie or something. Or, if he's really irritating me, I can always go in the bedroom and shut the door.

The fifth stage is Acceptance. It doesn't matter how I feel about Mulder coming over tonight. The deed is done. In fact, I can hear him knocking now. I just hope he had the good sense to pick up some Chinese from Yangtze River.

And if he forgot the chocolate, I'll have to kill him.

*

Scully takes her time about answering the door, leaving me standing in the hallway juggling my laptop, a brown bag of hot Chinese food, a six-pack of beer, and a pan of brownies. I have to knock with my knee.

Finally the door swings open. Her eyes sweep up and down the length of me. "Beer?"

"I figured you'd want to drink something." No way am I going to bring wine to Scully's apartment. Wine is downright risky, and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

She sniffs the air. "Mulder, please tell me that's steamed dumplings I smell."

"They're going to be steamed dumplings on the hallway floor if you don't let me by. This bag is starting to burn my hands."

She moves aside, and I push my way in and set the food on kitchen table, keeping my laptop tucked under my arm. I turn to face her. "Do you want me to go work in the living room, or is it okay if I eat with you first?"

She gives me a strange look. "You can eat first, Mulder."

"All right. I won't say a word."

She shoots me another look. "Do I owe you for the Chinese, or are you treating?"

"Um...my treat?"

"Okay, then you can talk."

I set my laptop down and take a seat at the table. Scully goes into the cupboards, and comes back with two plates and some serving spoons. I watch her warily as she lifts the little white take-out cartons from the brown bag. Maybe there's hope for my absolution yet, I think. At least tonight she isn't wearing one of those keep-away-from-me severely tailored suits of hers. Instead, she has on soft plaid pants and an oversized sweatshirt that makes her look like a college student. The pants look like they might even be pajama bottoms. Does she ever sleep in those? 

Whoa. No thinking about sleeping, I remind myself. Thoughts of Scully sleeping lead to thoughts of Scully in bed, and thoughts of Scully in bed can lead to very dangerous ideas...

Jesus, haven't I learned my lesson yet? I know I screwed up in Boston. I screwed up even before Boston, really, in Miami and in Wisconsin. I should never have touched Scully. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway. And the worst part, the absolutely unforgivable detail, is that I made Scully cry.

I have never won an argument with a woman who cried. It just isn't possible. Only the world's most cold-blooded bastard could remain proof against a woman's tears. It doesn't even matter what we're arguing about, or whether I am in the right. Let a woman start to cry, and I feel like such a sadistic shit that before I know it I am apologizing for anything and everything I have ever done in my life.

And that's just ordinary women—the forgettable girls I dated when I was a lot younger, and the manipulative Phoebes and Dianas of the world. Their all-too-frequent tears always made me feel two inches tall, made me eat my heart out with guilt. Potent stuff, a woman's tears. But   
Scully's…

Scully never cries. I've seen her tear up now and then, but only after encountering an extreme provocation like death, disease, or utter disaster. She's too strong to cry otherwise. Never once have I known her to bawl her eyes out, to burst into outright sobs. Never once, until   
Boston.

Even now, almost a week since it happened, it's almost unbearable to think about. Unbearable—and yet, paradoxically, impossible to put out of my mind. I was lying on my back, happier than I can remember being in a long time, looking up at Scully as we made love. She was moving above me in a sinuous motion, rocking up and down slowly, unhurriedly, in a way that made me want to believe in God and heaven and choirs of angels. And she was beautiful, so beautiful; her hair was a like a vivid curtain against her pale skin, and her eyes were dark and   
soft with passion. Dark and soft—and then, unexpectedly, swimming with unshed tears…

When I saw that, it was like a knife in my heart. Why was she crying? I was happy. She had to be happy too, didn't she? Hadn't she wanted this as much as I had? She'd come to my room two nights before, and the previous morning. She'd agreed when I'd suggested that we make the most of our last morning together in these rooms. This was bliss, dizzyingly sweet. What was wrong?

Unless…was it possible I'd made a huge mistake? Only the night before, I'd said to her, "We shouldn't be doing this." She hadn't protested, hadn't contradicted my words. "No, no we shouldn't," she'd agreed. I'd taken her kisses for unspoken encouragement, but what if she really hadn't wanted me to keep going? Maybe this whole thing had been a huge misunderstanding on my part. What if the responses I'd taken for passion had really been nothing more than Scully's gentle determination not to hurt me?

The thought was frightening, galling, humiliating. I'd felt tears start in my own eyes. And then I felt her coming, shuddering powerfully around me. In almost the same instant she'd burst into tears. I lay there baffled, frightened, yet still so caught in sensation that a minute later my own tension exploded in a similar release. With that I'd lost my own tenuous grip on composure. Gasping and crying, I'd tried to thank her and kiss her and apologize all at once. God, I was a piece of work.

Three minutes later she was in the shower, getting ready so we could catch our plane. I lay on my back in bed, my eyes closed, trying to convince myself that Scully was happy. I loved her. She was the most important person in my life. We'd just made love together. Everything was fine. Everything. I kept my eyes shut, and tried not to listen to the sobs coming from the other side of the connecting door.

That was the last time we were within arm's reach of one another. Since then I haven't come within five feet of her, not once. Not to kiss her; not to touch her. 

Not even to help her carry her suitcase out of the Marriott, and back to the sobering reality of the rest of our lives.

*

The look on Mulder's face is priceless and heartbreaking. He seems so unsure of himself, as if I may fling him out of my apartment any second. I have to admit that sometimes I can be awfully stern and cold with him and I decide tonight I'm just going to have to figure out a way to relax around him if we're going to remain partners and friends.

After unpacking the Chinese, I grab the pan of brownies and peek inside. Holy Mary and all the Attending Saints and Seraphim, these puppies are the real deal, moist-looking and thick, smelling like paradise. I find a butter knife in the drawer and pry up a generous-looking square. From the kitchen table, Mulder clears his throat. "Not until after you've had your dinner, young lady."

My eyebrow begins its ascent towards my forehead. "Last time I checked, Mulder, I was an adult who is allowed to eat her dessert first." I lift the brownie to my mouth and take a taste. Oh, oh, yes, that's the stuff, deep chocolate, not too sweet, tasting like it's laced with espresso and walnuts. 

"That good, huh?" I hear Mulder say.

After my eyeballs have returned from their visit to the back of my head I manage to nod. "That girlfriend of your cousin's can bake." I cut another square and offer it to Mulder on a paper towel. "Try it."

Mulder looks at me like I'm Eve, proffering the accursed apple. "I'd rather eat my Chinese first."

I laugh. "Chicken. Bet your mother didn't like it when you wanted sweets before meals."

He shoots me a dirty look and shoves half the thing in his mouth. Like me, his face twists into ecstasy. He swallows. "Damn, I'm going to have to thank Ari for that. She's a young woman of many talents."

Sitting down at the table I finish my brownie and immediately cut another square. I can't help it, I'm a sucker for chocolate and these things are addictive. "Want to split this one with me?" I hold out the second brownie to Mulder, licking crumbs away from my lower lip. He reaches for the brownie and our fingers touch. It's the first time I've touched Mulder since last Sunday and even that mere glance of fingers feels just too good for comfort.

That's the sad part, see? I went for so many years without being touched that the most innocuous caresses started to have far too much meaning to me. Our quick squeeze of hands after Modell, the press of his hand into my back as we walked, a grasping of my fingers when I was in the hospital, those touches began to be too significant to a woman starved for touch.

I push the brownies aside. Despite having ingested several hundred calories of pure butter and egg fat, I'm still starving. "What did you get us?" I ask Mulder.

"All your favorites, Scully." And again, there's that whipped-puppy look. It's cute as hell, but also guilt-inducing. I wonder if he uses that look on other women, or if that's a look exclusively for me.

He's right, it is all my favorites. Steamed dumplings, vegetable lo mein, kung pao chicken and beef with black bean sauce. I flash him a smile of gratitude after sniffing the cartons.

Mulder can be the most inconsiderate man on the face of the planet (I still don't have a desk), and then turn around and do something that really touches me, that shows that occasionally he does sit up and take notice. Last year, for Christmas, he found me a first edition, autographed   
copy of Betty Smith's coming of age novel "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." It has always been one of my favorite books and it confounded me how he could have known that until I remembered one night, months before Christmas, we were in a motel scanning cable stations when we caught a minute or two of the movie version on AMC. I happened to casually mention how much I had loved the book and how I should buy it again and re-read it. Mulder didn't say much in return, but somewhere in the recesses of that brain of his he took notes for later.

Have I mentioned lately how I don't understand this man?

We crack open bottles of the Bass Ale and the tension in the room seems to dissipate as we start eating our food. Wisely, we keep the conversation to light topics—where the best mechanic in the D.C. area is, the painting I need to do in the kitchen, the latest antics of my nephews. And damn, I can eat tonight. Mulder must be thoroughly disgusted by the sight of me shoving food in as fast as the chopsticks will let me. 

I come up for air, put down the chopsticks and say, by way of explanation, "All I had to eat today was a blueberry muffin and about a gallon of coffee."

Mulder finishes slurping noodles (and I won't even tell you what that sound reminds me of). "S'okay, Scully. You're not a supermodel, you are allowed to eat."

This is going to go just fine, I tell myself. We only needed that time apart to calm down a little, let the swelling subside, so to speak. "Fight you for the last dumpling?"

Both of us lunge for the carton with our chopsticks but I win, being the more dexterous of the two. I'm also a better shot, but just try to tell Mulder that. I bring the slippery dumpling, covered in dipping sauce, up to my mouth but it falls from the chopstick and lands on my sweatshirt with a plop. "Shit," I say and Mulder looks up, surprised. I may swear like a trucker in my own head, but I rarely curse in front of him.

"My sweatshirt," I explain, jumping up from the table as Mulder inexplicably begins giggling in the background. In the bedroom I lose the sweatshirt and find the matching top to the pajama bottoms. I have a brief debate with myself, should I wear a bra with this or not? The top isn't nearly as baggy as the sweatshirt was, but it seems silly to wear a bra with pajamas. I'll just try not to make any swift motions around Mulder. It seems to take forever just to settle the bra issue. Then I find myself removing the ugly panties and putting on a more respectable pair made of black lace.

Wait a minute, what am I doing? There is no chance in hell Mulder is getting a look at my panties, so why am I changing them? Ah yes, the white pair were rather loose in the elastic department and they felt like they might slip any second.

As I start to walk out of my bedroom, it hits me like a ton of bricks. My head feels heavy and swimmy and my eyes are starting to feel dry. It's like I'm having an out-of-body experience, where I'm here, but I'm also in the corner, watching myself.

I know this feeling. It's been a long, long time, but you never really forget.

I stalk to the kitchen where Mulder is still slurping away and stand in front of him, hands on my hips.

He looks up at me and I notice his eyes are awfully pink. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"Mulder, what the hell is in these brownies?"

*

I stare at her blankly for a moment. "The brownies? Whatever is usually in brownies, I guess. Chocolate, probably, and sugar and—“ I notice the way she is looking at me, her frowning expression and her angry stance. I also notice the strange way my own voice sounds to my ears, as if I am speaking from inside a barrel. 

Realization dawns. "Oh, shit."

"Please tell me that you didn't just feed me hash brownies," she says, her glare becoming murderous.

I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. "Scully, I didn't know, I swear. I thought they were just, you know, brownies." I am afraid to look her in the eye. When I get home, I promise myself, I am going to kill Seth.

"Mulder, I can't believe this. I ate one and half of them, and not little ones, either. You come over here and you feed me hash brownies!"

"Scully, I didn't know—”

"Mulder, don't give me that innocent act. Nothing is ever your fault, is it? I've had it up to here with you!" She makes a chopping motion at her hairline.

Okay, maybe I fucked up. Maybe now I'm supposed to just sit here and take my punishment like a man. But there's something about that gesture, that pissed-off little chop at her forehead, that strikes me as funny. I try to keep a straight face. I strive mightily to look grave and remorseful as she lays into me. Still, I can't help it. The urge to laugh just grows, until finally it comes out in a stifled snicker.

She stops in mid-rant. "What the hell is so funny, Mulder?"

"Up to here," I say, still choking back laughter, and point to her forehead. "On anybody else, that wouldn't be that high."

Her brows fly together. "Ha, ha. Very funny."

It is pretty damned funny, or at least it seems so to me. I dissolve into full-fledged giggles. "Up to here on you is only up to here on me," I say, and point at my left nipple.

"Mulder, you're stoned." 

"Yes," I agree, laughing helplessly. "I am."

She stares at me angrily, and then her frown begins to quiver. Suddenly she starts to laugh, too. "Your eyes are red," she says, giggling. "You look like some big old red-eyed guy."

Coming from Scully, this bit of supreme inarticulation sends me into another fit of hilarity. I can't seem to stop laughing. "Oh, my God," I wheeze finally. "I am so messed up."

She sinks down into the chair beside me. "Me, too. I haven't felt this way since college."

I look at her in delighted surprise. "You smoked pot in college?" Somehow, I had never imagined Scully as the partying kind.

"Why is that so surprising? I've done a lot of wild things."

"Yeah, I bet."

"I have!"

"Uh-huh. Name one."

She leans back and gives me a superior look. "I can name three—Miami, Wisconsin, and Boston."

I feel my face growing hot. "Besides that," I say quickly.

She thinks for a minute, her head tipped back. For the first time I notice that she's changed completely into pajamas. In my brownie-induced fog, she looks intriguingly soft. I can see the outline of her breasts straining against the flannel. She's not wearing a bra. Not that she needs one. Scully has great breasts, the best breasts, firm and round and silky...

I realize that I am heading into forbidden territory, and quickly avert my eyes.

"For one thing," she says, fortunately unaware of my lascivious thoughts, "I once gave a guy a blow-job in a car." 

My jaw falls open. "You did not! He was driving?"

She looks slightly chastened. "No, it was a parked car. But it was a really busy parking lot. Someone could have walked by at any moment."

I have to laugh at Scully's idea of a walk on the wild side. "Wow, you wild woman, you."

"Well, I was barely seventeen at the time, Mulder," she says, bristling. "How much action were you getting when you were seventeen?"

"Enough," I say vaguely.

She makes an indelicate snorting sound. "Yeah, with your right hand."

Vagueness never seems to be as effective on Scully as I hope it will be. I look away. "Geez, Scully, remind me not to get you stoned again."

She giggles. I try to maintain my air of wounded machismo but soon the hash brownies win out and I find myself giggling, too. She's right, after all. Or mostly right. I do have a few secrets but I suppose they would hardly qualify me for wild man status either.

After the tension and the guilt of the past week, it's good to be laughing with Scully again. Really, I'm feeling pretty fine. I am not sure how much of this has to do with the pot and how much has to do with Scully herself. When I turn my head, the objects in the room leave squiggly little trails in my vision. Then again, Scully has always had the ability to make me laugh.

We move into the living room where, God help me, Scully has a fire going in the fireplace, and sit next to each other on the couch.

She leans toward me. "So," she says out of the blue, "have you ever done it stoned?"

*

Oh God oh God oh God, did I really say that? I don't know whether to laugh or cry at my drug-induced idiocy. Instead, Mulder is the one who laughs. "Is that a question or an offer, Scully?"

I lean back into the couch cushions. How have I had this couch for so long and not noticed how insanely soft and comfortable it is? After a swallow of beer, I say, "Don't flatter yourself, Big Guy..."

"Big Guy? Thanks for the compliment."

The hole I am digging gets deeper and deeper by the second. "You didn't answer my question. Have you ever had sex high?"

He makes a funny little sound in the back of his throat. "I never smoked pot once I got out of high school."

"And your point is...?"

Now Mulder is the one to turn red, nearly as red as his stoner-boy eyes. "You were right, Scully, I wasn't getting any action back then. I wasn't a wild child like you, blowing boys in cars."

I start laughing so hard I tumble off the couch and land on the floor with a resounding thump, narrowly missing whacking my head on the coffee table. "What's so damn funny?" Mulder demands.

"I was, I was," I wheeze through waves of laughter, "I was picturing you as a teenager, giving head to another boy in a car."

Mulder chucks a wadded-up paper napkin at me. "Cute, really cute."

I crawl across the floor to the fireplace, since standing currently seems to be too complicated a process for my brain. I lie on my back and stare at the dancing flames. "I remember getting high in college," I say. "I didn't do it a lot because I was a serious student, but sometimes my   
boyfriend and I would share a joint and it was like heaven, the two of us on his narrow little bed, making love and feeling like I was floating at the same time. I wish I could be that young again, everything so uncomplicated..."

"It sucks being old," is Mulder's astute comment. He lurches across the room to the stereo. "Hey, Scully, you have any Pink Floyd?"

I groan. "God, Mulder, drag your ass out of the seventies."

He clatters through my stacks of CDs, dropping every third one until the room fills with the opening chords of "Hey You". "I knew you had some Floyd." 

Mulder grabs a pillow from the couch and joins me on the floor in front of the fire.

"This song is so depressing," I moan.

"It reminds me of going to midnight shows of the movie. I wanted to be Bob Geldof when I grew up, even thought of shaving my eyebrows off."

I snicker. "I'll bet you had a black Pink Floyd tee shirt, huh?"

"Don't forget the feathered hair. My hair feathers really well."

Mulder, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, blow-drying his hair into perfect feathers. It's too much, I collapse in helpless giggles.

"If you think that's bad, you should have seen the mustache I tried to grow Senior year. Darcy, my girlfriend, thought I looked like Tony Orlando."

I'm gonna pee my pants if he keeps this up. "Is Darcy the one who wouldn't sleep with you?"

"One and the same." He shrugs ruefully. "Never got to add her to the Mulder Babe List."

I cock an eyebrow. "And just how long is that list?" Or maybe I really don't want to know the answer to that. I mean, anyone who calls it the Babe List, that's got to be some list.

He spreads his arms far apart. "Miles and miles. How about you? You asked first."

"Fine, let me see." I blow hair out of my eyes and think a minute. Math isn't my best skill right now. "Okay, I've got it. Nine, total. No--it's ten, if I count you."

Mulder sits up. "You did NOT."

Ha, score one for me. Actually, score ten. I shocked Mulder for once, and that's a wonderful feeling. I won't tell him that they were almost all in college and med school and before him, I hadn't had sex since George Bush was in office, unless you count a little heavy petting with Ed Jerse on his couch. "I did, too."

"Ten, huh? There's a lot I don't know about you."

If that isn't the understatement of the year, I don't know what is. "What about you?"

He casts his eyes downward in a coy gesture. "Scully," he says in a low voice. "I'm terribly ashamed to tell you this, but I'm still a virgin."

I erupt into some unladylike snorts. "So, you're telling me I was shacked up with Eddie Van Blundht in Boston?"

Mulder flops back down on the floor, this time onto his stomach, and runs his hand through his dark hair. I am suddenly all too aware of the way he smells. For a man who wears no cologne, Mulder still has a signature scent—a little Ivory soap, Right Guard, pool chlorine and a dash of something dark that is his own. I scoot a little further away from him. He lets out a sharp breath. "Only six," he mutters. "Pathetic for a man my age."

He's embarrassed, this is too rich for words. I stifle a giggle, for I may be high, but I'm not patently cruel. "Are you counting me?"

"You've always counted, Scully." 

I choose not to respond to that. Danger lurks therein.

Mulder's feet are distracting me. Somewhere along the line he removed his socks and he's wiggling his toes. Wiggle wiggle wiggle, I can't take my eyes away. It's fascinating. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home...

"What are you staring at?"

I raise my head. "Huh? Nothing, just your toes." More laughter bubbles up. "You keep wiggling them around!"

"I do?" Mulder looks over his shoulder at his feet. "So I do. My new shoes haven't been broken in yet and my toes hurt."

And then it's like I'm watching a movie of myself, in which I get up and make a beeline to the bathroom and rummage in the medicine cabinet until I find what I'm looking for. I return to the living room, all too aware of the silly grin plastered on my face. Got to stop smiling, my cheeks are beginning to ache.

"What do you have there?" he asks.

"I have the cure for what ails you." I brandish a small bottle. "Peppermint Foot Lotion from the Body Shop. How else do you think I'm able to run in those high heels?"

"Foot lotion?" His eyebrows rise in suspicion. "Isn't that for girls?"

"You'll thank me for it tomorrow."

He settles back on the floor, this time on his back, and I sit near his feet. Okay, I don't have a thing for feet at all, in fact most men's feet are disgusting, but Mulder happens to be blessed with a nice pair of feet—narrow, high arches and long, slender toes. And you know what they say about men with long toes.

I squeeze a handful of the minty-fresh goop in my palm and begin massaging it into the instep of his left foot, which starts moving around in my hand. "Ticklish?"

"Nah," he grunts. "It feels weird, kind of tingly."

"That's the menthol in the lotion." I pick up his right foot and rest it in my lap, working the lotion in with even strokes. Mulder sits up, watching me with dark, intent eyes. Soon he is breathing harder and beginning to squirm. This isn't turning him on, is it? It can't, I mean, I never get excited when I go for a pedicure.

As I rub harder, his foot relaxes in my fingers and I get this irresistible urge to take his big toe in my mouth.

Oh God, do I have a foot fetish after all? Will I have to start hanging out in feet chat rooms on the Internet? 

The next thing I know, I'm bending to his foot and my tongue is slowly running up his arch to his toes. And then it is exploring the little crevice between his toes and the pad of his foot, tasting mint and salt. His toes scrunch up.

I just made Mulder's toes curl.

This is so, so wrong. What is my problem? But I can't stop myself as he squirms at my ministrations and pants louder and louder as I circle his big toe and then surround it with my lips.

He scoots backward a little, as if suddenly afraid of me. "Scully," he says between harsh breaths. "You have to stop that."

*

She lifts her head from my foot and regards me silently.

"Please," I beg. "Just stop."

She gazes at me, and a slow smile spreads across her lips. "What's the matter, Mulder?"

"Scully, don't play around with me. Come on. Please." I am almost on the verge of tears.

Her head dips to my foot again. I watch in dismay as her lips close on my toe, and she begins to suck. She keeps her eyes, those big blue eyes of hers, locked on mine the whole time.

Oh, fuck. Oh fucking fuck. I don't know if it's the brownies or the lotion or just the sight of Scully's beautiful mouth surrounding a part of me, but I am in serious trouble here. Serious, serious trouble. I am breathless and my heart is racing and I am hard—really hard. I can barely sit still.

She keeps on sucking. I curl my fingers through the pile of her rug in a death grip. She swirls her tongue around my toe. My knuckles turn white.

She makes a little noise in the back of her throat—half sigh, half moan.

I yank away, none too gently, and skitter backwards across the rug out of her reach. I sit there panting, staring at her, with my knees drawn up so that she can't see my erection. Oh, God. Oh, God. I lean my head down, and rest my fevered forehead on one knee.

Does she have any idea what torture I am suffering here? This is all just a game to her, a flirtatious little brownie-induced joke, but she is playing with fire. Every nerve ending in my body is tingling, including a few I didn't even know I had.

I am not going to touch her. I am NOT.

She starts to laugh. "Mulder, I was just kidding around."

Mmmm-hmmm. It might be funny, if I were made of steel. I am not made of steel. "Scully, don't talk to me for a second," I say, my head still leaning on my knee. "Just give me a minute, would you?"

Jesus, what a pathetic dork I am, I think as I struggle for some composure. I must look pretty damned hilarious to Scully, Dr. I-number-my-lovers-in-the-double-digits. My breathing is ragged and I'm afraid to even look at her.

On the stereo, Pink Floyd is singing "Comfortably Numb." Don't I wish, I think glumly. But how am I supposed to feel? She was sucking on my toe, for God's sake.

I hear the soft sounds of her moving across the rug toward me. "You okay, Mulder?" she asks. "You're not going to be sick, are you?"

I laugh weakly, still not looking at her. My erection shows no sign of subsiding. "Jesus, Scully. I'm stoned, not drunk."

She giggles. "You're funny when you're stoned."

"And you're pretty scary."

She moves even closer. "So did that—you know, did it feel good?"

Yes, it felt good. And war is heck. Scully has a gift for understatement. "It was okay."

She giggles again. "You have nice feet, Mulder. Nice other parts, too." Her voice is warm and a little rough around the edges.

"Scully, please," I groan. This would be difficult enough even if I didn't have hash brownies coursing through my bloodstream. The blood is pounding in my head. I can feel it pounding lower, too, my cock pulsing with every beat of my heart.

"You want me to do the other foot?" she says, so close that I can feel her breath on my neck.

I want you to do every inch of my body, I think treacherously. I want to put Peppermint Foot Lotion all over you and then lick it off as if you are a giant candy cane. I want to come inside you. "No, thank you."

"You want another brownie?"

I can't help laughing. "No, I think I've had enough."

"Mulder, why won't you look at me?"

Instead of answering, I just sigh and listen to the music swirling around me. I mouth the lyrics along with the song: "There is no pain, you are receding; a distant ship's smoke on the horizon..." I used to love this music when I was in high school.

I feel Scully's hand on my shoulder. "Mulder, say something."

I turn my head and look at her, still with my head leaning on my knee. "This must be some good weed."

*

Things just keep getting progressively worse. What the hell is wrong with me tonight? It's like we've entered a bad TV movie. “The Three Faces of Dana.”

Mulder is staring at me and I feel deep shame. I've gone completely out of control, sucking his toes like that, teasing him. I'd like to blame it on the brownies, but is that really it? My head is swirling with arousal and contradiction and suddenly I just cannot deal. I have to get out of this room.

I mumble something to him about needing a drink and flee to the brightly-lit refuge of the kitchen. After pouring a glass of apple cider and downing it in one cotton-mouthed gulp, I press my forehead against the cool of the fridge.

Mulder and I, stoned. What a joke. We really are the partners that put the fun in dysfunctional.

Why doesn't this stuff come easily to us? Why can't we laugh and make love and forget ourselves like normal people?

You and Mulder are the farthest thing from normal on the planet, I think, and stifle a giggle as tears begin to drip down my cheeks at the same time.

Must. Not. Cry. But it's too late, the wave is breaking over me and I have to clutch the refrigerator's handle to keep from collapsing on the linoleum below.

Footsteps sound behind me and I look over my shoulder, blinking away the tears. Maybe he's too high to notice. "Do you want some juice?" I offer.

His face falls and he sits down at the table, staring at his hands. "I should go home," he mutters.

I shake my head. "You can't, you're in no condition."

Mulder looks up at me and I see the naked pain in his eyes, which have turned a steely gray. My heart does a little lurch and I wonder if this is how it feels to have a broken heart, to break a heart. I dab at my eyes with a hank of paper towel and sigh, leaning against the counter. "I'm sorry," I exhale. "Can I blame it on the drugs?"

His mouth twists into a poor imitation of a grin. "I was drugged..."

I remember a chubby, teenaged maybe-vampire and Mulder singing the theme song from Shaft in his undershirt. It seems so long ago.

A long silence passes until he says, "I tried so hard to be good tonight, to not touch you, but you were making it awfully difficult back there."

More tears speckle my face. "I wanted to leave you alone, too."

He looks straight at me and I notice his eyes seem to be completely focused and sober now. "I promised myself that I'd never force myself on you again."

I have to try really hard not to laugh. "Force yourself? Is that what you think it was those times on the road? God, Mulder, did I ever turn you away? Did I ever say no?" Please, each and every time I temporarily shucked off the guilt and eagerly jumped into bed with him.

Mulder shrugs. "There's saying no and there's saying no."

He just doesn't get it, doesn't think that I could possibly want him the way he wants me. Mulder doesn't understand that I've been suffering just as much as he has.

I cross the kitchen and kneel before him, grasping his warm hand in mine. "I never said no in any way, shape or form. Believe me, you would have been made very aware of it if I hadn't wanted to be with you."

He squeezes. "Why did you cry in Boston?"

Burying my head in his lap, I fight another storm of tears. Is this what happens when I suppress my tears for so long? I lift my head. "I was crying because I knew it had to be the last time."

His entire body seems to relax and Mulder strokes my hair. "Why aren't we able to really talk to each other, Scully?"

I smile. "Because we're two lonely, misanthropic people."

He nods. "How do we stop wanting each other?" I can feel the proof of his want under my cheek.

That's it. I give up, I'm hauling out the white flag. Total and complete capitulation. I can't fight my desire anymore, I can't keep struggling against the current of the inevitable. Mulder and I can't go back to the way things once were. As my mother likes to say, it's impossible to pour the spilled milk back into the glass.

I may still be a little high, but it all seems so clear to me now.

Mulder's eyes are wide and fearful. He knows he's just put it all in my hands. I take a deep breath. "I don't think we can stop. I don't know if I want to stop."

As if by the mutual accord of our unspoken agreement of surrender, our mouths meet. Collide, really, in a hot and sloppy kiss.

He pulls away from my lips. "Here we go again..."

"We can always blame it on the drugs," I chuckle.

Perhaps we'll always need an excuse to feel that it's okay to be together like this. 

My fingers travel to the fly of his jeans and clumsily start working the buttons. Now who was the genius who thought up the button fly? I'd like to smack him.

"Scully," he gasps and throws his head back. He raises his hips off the chair and pushes his pants and boxers down.

I smile and bend my head to this most agreeable task.

Have I mentioned how I have the munchies right now?

*

If this is not Nirvana, if Heaven is actually better this, then I don't want an afterlife because I really don't think I could stand it. 

This has to be the best blowjob of my life.

Maybe it's the pot, but I can feel everything in amazing detail—the back of Scully's mouth, the swirl of her tongue, the friction as her lips slide up and down my cock. She has her hand wrapped around the base of me, working back and forth with every bob of her head. It's driving me crazy. 

"Oh, God, Scully," I groan.

I'm not sure why it's so good. Not that I've ever really had a bad blowjob; "bad blowjob" is the ultimate oxymoron, more nonsensical than "genuine imitation" or "definite maybe." But this is incredible.

She slips her free hand between my thighs, and fondles my balls. Her mouth is like silk. I'm breathing like a bellows, just trying to stay ahead of the sensation.

Eventually sensation pulls into the lead. "Scully." I squeeze my hands into fists. "Scully, you'd better stop."

She shakes her head—which, considering where her head is and what it's doing, only makes matters worse.

"Scully, that's enough." I tense the muscles in my legs and hips, fighting the urge to twist my fingers in her hair and thrust up into her mouth. "Come on, stop. Please."

But no, a very take-charge type is my Scully. She's not taking orders from anyone. Instead she just keeps doing what she's doing. She lifts her head away just far enough to sweep her tongue in a complete circle around the head of my cock, and then plunges her mouth back down again. 

"Scully!" I can barely get the words out. "Scully I don't—I don't want to—"

She shakes her head again.

God, how I would like to put my hand on the back of her head and give in to it, coming hard, coming loudly. But, face it, I get one chance, and then the show's over, at least for a while. Right now the thought of being outside Scully's body for even the briefest of times is not something I'm willing to contemplate.

I put my hands on her shoulders, and push her away. 

She sits back on her heels and looks up at me accusingly. Those huge blue eyes of hers are as wide and bottomless as infinity. "Mulder, what do you think you're doing?"

I laugh breathlessly. "I'm being a total masochist."

"Mulder, I wanted to—"

"I know what you wanted to do, and believe me, I appreciate it." God, I'm aching. Still panting, too. "You have no idea how much I appreciate it. But I don't want that right now."

"Mulder, I don't mind..."

"Well, I do." I slide off the chair, and kneel before her on the floor. "I want something a little more...landmark."

"More landmark?"

"Scully," I say, reaching out and pulling her pajama top off over her head, "when am I ever going to get another chance to make love to you stoned?"

"I don't even think we're really stoned anymore. I think it's wearing off."

Ever the logical one, isn't she? I yank off my own shirt, and tug her against me. "Shhhh," I say. "Don't spoil my sex, drugs, and rock and roll fantasy."

She laughs. I have a shirtless Scully pressed against me, laughing. Does it get any better than this? I don't think so. She said she didn't want to stop. She said I never forced her. Maybe it's not the most circumspect thing in the world, sleeping with my partner, but it feels right. 

Fuck circumspection, I think with great satisfaction. This isn't just some momentary lapse. I want this. I've been wanting it for years.

I lift my hands to her warm breasts, and kiss her. My pants are down around my knees and my cock is prodding her in the navel, wet and a little sticky from a moment before. I probably look ridiculous but it certainly feels good, rocking against her like this. Her breasts are soft and she tastes like apple cider.

"Let's go in the bedroom," she whispers, as I circle her nipples with my fingertips.

"Unh-unh," I say, throbbing. "Your bed's too big. We'll lose the whole wild college high-on-pot vibe."

"Then where? I don't have a twin bed."

"Right here. On the floor." I push her flannel pajama pants down off her hips. "What was the name of your college roommate, Scully?"

She laughs. "Julie."

"Okay, we're in your dorm room," I say, reaching down to find she's already wet. "We have to do it now, Scully, right now, before Julie gets back from the library."

"In college I was the one who was always at the library."

I ease her over onto her back, and cover her body with mine. "Don't screw with my fantasy, Scully."

She giggles.

"Nope, we have to do it now." My fingers stroke through her slick folds, pushing a little way inside her. "I'm going to fail all my classes because all I can think about all day is fucking you."

"You're going to fail, Mulder?" Her voice is playful, but with a breathless catch in it that makes my temperature soar.

"Oh, yeah, Scully. If you don't let me fuck you right now, that is."

"I wouldn't want you to flunk out..."

"Yeah," I agree. "We couldn't have that." I position myself, and thrust inside her. 

Oh, Jesus.

I didn't really have a plan for this; I didn't stop to think whether I ought to make it slow and languorous or go for broke. It's probably good that I didn't have a plan. Adrenaline takes over. 

I start shoving into her, hard. "We college boys—like it rough," I say, panting. I have one hand under her ass, holding her against me. "Rough and—fast."

She moans. 

"Got to hurry." I'm slamming into her. "Before Julie gets back."

She closes her eyes. She's tilted her hips and she's straining against me, meeting my thrusts with thrusts of her own. I drive into slickness so tight and so sweet that I can hardly stand it.

"Come on, Scully," I growl, the words coming out in jerks. "God, you feel good."

She's gasping, squeezing my cock with muscles designed, it seems, just to reduce me to incoherence. The soft little noises she's making are like gasoline on a brush fire.

"Yeah. That's it. Gonna major in—fucking—"

I pound into her. Her hands are clawing at my back. I realize how crazy this is, spinning out college fantasies while nailing her on the floor, but the thought just makes me that much more out of control.

And then, mercifully, she gives a little cry and her back arches and that wild convulsive feeling explodes around me. And the knowledge that it's so soon, that Scully is already coming and we really have beaten the imaginary roommate, is like a shot of pure hormonal insanity. Just a few more thrusts, just a few seconds later, and I gush into her, coming as hard as if I really am twenty-one years old again.

I collapse against her, dead weight, dizzy.

And we both burst into laughter.

 

*

It's a mighty good thing that my mother is miles away and has no chance of seeing her daughter lying in the bathtub with her partner, holding a beer in one hand while said partner passes her bits of leftover kung pao chicken with his chopsticks. It's a blessing she can't see the post-coital blush on her daughter's face or the loopy smile her partner is wearing. My sweet, terribly naive mother would never get over the shock.

My bathtub, which normally seems as large as a swimming pool now seems crowded after adding Mulder to the equation. To save room I'm sitting between his legs, with my head resting against his chest, which is not a bad way to spend a Friday night.

"Green pepper?" Mulder asks and I nod my head. En route to my mouth it slips from the sticks and splashes into the pale lavender Tranquility Bay-flavored water. Mulder fishes it out from under my left calf and hurls it towards the toilet, where it lands in the bowl with a satisfying splash.

He raises his arms and cheers. "A three point shot for Fox Mulder and the crowd at Madison Square Garden goes wild!"

I snort with laughter, not really sure if that was actually funny or if I'm still high.

After setting the carton of chicken back down on the floor, Mulder steals my bottle of Bass and takes a long swallow. Leaning against him the way I am, I can feel his esophagus contracting as the beer travels down to his stomach.

Mulder sighs, but it seems to be one of contentment. "I don't know if I'm high anymore."

I smile. "I am, but I'm not sure if it's from the brownies or the sex."

It's probably both. A powerful combination—pot, chocolate and Mulder.

His hand reaches up and lightly pinches my right nipple between his fingers and I loll my head against his shoulder. "Do you like that?" he whispers in my ear in a sly voice. The other nipple gets the same treatment and I smother a gasp. "Do you?" he repeats, circling my nipple with wet fingers.

"God, Mulder, what's not to like?"

Fingers trail ticklish patterns on my belly. "I just want to make sure you're satisfied."

Was he temporarily deaf back there in the kitchen? No, simply as insecure as I am. "More than satisfied," I manage to say as his fingers dip lower under the water to my lower thigh. "I'd say sated."

"Good," he mutters and bites down on my neck. "But does that mean you don't want more?"

Oh, his fingers have found my clitoris and make feathery circles. Tease. He sets the beer down and soaps his fingers and slides them back and forth, back and forth. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out.

"Do you want more, Scully?" I can feel him hardening against my lower back. You have to love a man who at his age is still as randy as a teenager. Perhaps there's something to be said for not resolving the sex issue for more than five years.

With shaking legs I stand up. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"Room," I say, turning around to feast my eyes on his happily aroused state. "We need more room."

I give him a hand up and out of the tub. "Your bath mat looks awfully comfy," he cracks.

"Mulder, do you have some deep-seated aversion to beds?"

His answer is to push me down onto the mat. I shiver, my wet body protesting the loss of the hot water, until he covers me with his warm flesh. He makes a nice blanket.

Damn, that man can kiss, not too much tongue, just enough of it entering my mouth and teasing with light movements in and out. I groan in happy protest and spread my legs, wanting desperately to be touched again. With unerring psychic ability, his hand finds me again and dips into the wetness, spreading slow circles. 

Then, I can't help but cry out as his head moves lower and his tongue starts its talented little dance across my clitoris, his lips nipping and sucking in turns. Some day I'm going to have to ask where he learned to do that, I think, as my fingers increase their grip on his shoulders. He should teach a community education class.

He lifts his head from me and I howl in disappointment. 

"Go back, go back," I mutter as my thighs begin to shake at the loss of sensation.

"No," he grins. Mulder orders in a low growl, "Put your hands on the edge of the bathtub." Bossy, but that's fine; next time I'll be in charge. I turn around so my back is to him and grip the porcelain between my hands, spreading my legs wider. His mouth moves down my back and he makes a happy humming noise as his two fingers move into me and gently thrust.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, I think.

I arch my back as he moves behind me and his cock slowly slides into me, my hips pushing him further in. It's strangely exciting not being able to see his face, but to hear his panting and groaning in my ear and feel his hardness driving in and out, at an increasingly faster pace.

"Harder," I mutter.

"You like it rough?" he asks and I can hear the grin on his face.

"Harder," I repeat.

With one hand grasping my shoulder and one pushing against my clit, he complies, throwing his back into the task. I hear myself mumbling his name over and over again, a litany of my desire until I simply can't stand it anymore. "This is so fucking good," I mutter into my hands, eyes squeezed shut. Oh God, it's going to happen again, I think, as my heart starts madly pounding.

"No, this is good fucking," he rasps and I laugh as the climax rips across me, leaving me a shaking, convulsing wreck.

Mulder turns me around so that I am sitting on him and again thrusts up into me. Our eyes lock and I can feel the tears well. His hand travels up to my face. "I'm not sad," I reassure him and he gives me a sadly sweet smile. We kiss as if the end of the world were near.

With the last burst of strength I move up and down on his cock with fierce abandon. "Oh shit," he says into my neck and I feel his lower body begin to tremble. With a drawn-out sigh, he comes, his arms tightly wrapped around my still-wet back, his lips pressing into my neck.

We stop and stare at each other.

"Oh God, Scully," he says, a red flush spreading on his cheeks.

"I know," I say, nodding.

Hard to believe that I had such a lover by my side for so many years.

The question now is, now that I have him, do I want to keep him? Or was this just another lapse?

No, I want this.

We clean up and dry off and hand-in-hand walk to my bedroom. I flick on the bedside lamp and turn down the covers. I knew there was a reason I did my laundry last night.

Sliding into bed next to him, I kiss his lips, loving his taste, his touch.

"In the morning we can christen this bed," I say.

"Who said anything about the morning?" he chortles, squeezing my bottom with his large hands.

Oh dear, I'm in big trouble with this man.

For once I'll have something interesting to tell Father McCue at confession.

*

I fit my key in the lock and swing the door open slowly, a little afraid of what I'm going to find. And with good reason: my apartment looks like it's been hit by Hurricane Budweiser. There are paper cups everywhere, the coffee table has been pushed over by the window, there's a stain on the wall that I sincerely hope is just splattered beer, and an open bag of Ruffles is strewn across the couch and all over the floor.

Also on my couch is the reason for this disaster, my cousin Seth. He's stretched out with his Doc Martens up on the leather and he's watching TV with my remote control in his hand."

"That better be the Discovery Channel," I say, remembering that I left an apartment full of college kids alone with my video collection last night.

He looks up, and grins. "Hey, Fox." 

There's nothing more silly looking than a white boy with dreadlocks. "Something happen to your arms? I mean, did you break all of the bones in some horrific accident that kept you from picking up all this shit?"

"I'll get to it."

I start collecting half-empty paper cups. "Where's Ari?" I ask, looking around for his girlfriend. 

"She went out for some food." He sits up. "Hey, that reminds me, dude—what did you do with our brownies?"

I give him the dirtiest look I can muster. "I ought to kick your ass for making those brownies in here. Did it ever occur to you that I'm a federal agent?"

He just grins and shrugs.

"I know what was in them," I add.

"Yeah, I bet you do. Good stuff, huh?"

I turn away so he won't see my smile. "Get off your ass and help me clean up this mess."

He does, but not without remarking, "You know, you're pretty crabby for a guy who just got laid."

I stop gathering cups and stare at him. "Who says I got laid?"

Seth starts to laugh. "Oh, please, dude. You didn't come home last night, you have a hickey on your neck, and even from here I can tell that you smell like some honey's bubble bath. Who was she?"

"None of your damn business."

"See what I mean? Crabby, crabby, crabby..."

I just ignore him, and go back to straightening up what used to be a habitable dwelling. Let him think I'm crabby if he likes, I decide happily. I'm not in an arguing mood. I may never be in an arguing mood again, not when I'm twice his age and I still got more sex than he did last night. 

I look around me. There's a lot to do here. The living room is a mess, the kitchen is a disaster, and I haven't even worked up the courage to check out the bathroom yet. It's going to take a while to get this place back in shape. I should probably take Seth and his girlfriend out to lunch, too; I did invite him to stay here, and I remember how much I enjoyed the occasional escape from bad college food when I was his age. And then...And then...

I smile to myself. I can't help it if I forgot my laptop at Scully's again, can I?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PD and Dasha would like to add that we do not advocate drug use in any way, shape or form, nor do we advocate the abuse of Pink Floyd and steamed dumplings. Do not try these sexual acts at home if you have knee or back problems.
> 
> Thanks to Becky, Gwen and Alanna for beta reading.


End file.
